The district attorney for Essex County has told the Gloucester police chief that his department does not have the authority to promise heroin users they will not be arrested if they if they voluntarily surrender at the police station and ask for medical treatment, according to published reports.

Gloucester Police Chief Leonard Campanello made headlines across the country earlier this month when he announced a change in departmental policy. Heroin users who show up at the station and surrender to police and turn in their drugs would be offered medical treatment rather than being arrested and tossed in jail.

But the Goucester Times is reporting that Essex DA Jonathan Blodgett has written to Campanello to let him know his department does not have the authority to make such a policy change.

"While we applaud the general idea of your proposal, an explicit promise not to charge a person who unlawfully possesses drugs may amount to a charging promise that you lack legal authority to make, and on which a drug offender may not be able to rely," Blodgett said in an excerpt of the letter published in the Times.

The letter also goes on to say "I am obligated to inform you that police departments and district attorneys are strictly limited by law with regard to promises or assurances as to whether a person will be charged with a crime."

A spokesman for Chief Campanello told The Republican and Masslive on Friday afternoon that he considers the DA's letter to be advisory, and that the department intends to go ahead with its original proposal on June 1.

Gloucester Police Chief Leonard CampanelloFile Photo

Campanello announced the department's policy change during a public forum in Gloucester earlier this month.

"We are poised to make revolutionary changes in the way we treat this disease," he told residents at the forum.

Any addict who walks into the Gloucester Police Department with drugs and the remainder of their drug equipment - needles, pipes or other paraphernalia - and asks for help will not be criminally charged, Campanello said. Instead, they will be steered into a treatment program to help them detox and recover.

"We will assign them an 'angel' who will be their guide through the process," Campanello said. "Not in hours or days, but on the spot."

Gloucester police spokesman John Guilfoil said Friday afternoon that Chief Campanello and the Gloucester police intend to go ahead with plans to launch the program on June 1.

The department is finalizing language in the department's new policies and procedures for dealing with addicts who want to get clean. That should be completed and by early next week, he said.

Campanello considered the DA's letter to be advisory only, not an outright prohibition, of the new policy, and that Blodgett is recommending that the department move cautiously.

Campanello understands the concerns but has decided that in the face of a heroin epidemic, that it is not necessarily the best approach to continue to treat addicts as criminals.

It is a "revolutionary approach" in law enforcement and one that has not been tried before but the chief is committed to it, Guilfoil said.

"The police department has made a decision to use its discretion not to arrest victims of the disease of drug addition when they come to us looking for help," he said.

"Addition is not a crime, it's a disease," Guilfoil said. "It requires treatment, not handcuffs."